Phillies All-Time Team: Left Field

It’s up to you to tell us who should be part of the Phillies All-Time team. During the winter, we’ll unveil one position at a time for you to vote on. After all the votes are tallied, and all the position filled, we’ll release the results. Make your vote count!

-Ryan Dinger: For over 100 years now, no Phillies leftfielder has served the position quite as well as turn-of-the-century superstar Ed Delahanty, who is my pick for the best left fielder in team history. Sporting a career OPS of .916 and an OPS+ of 152, Delahanty, a Hall of Famer, serves as both a perfect fit for the Phillies all time greatest leftfielder, and as a testament to the decades and decades of futility this team has in its long history.

-Ian Riccaboni: Del Ennis was the key offensive contributor on the 1950 Whiz Kids and a World War II hero, serving in the Pacific. This and more is why Ennis gets my vote for best left fielder in Phillies history. Ennis was an MVP contender for nearly all 11 seasons he spent with the Phils, with a .286/.344/.479 triple-slash and 259 HRs as a Phil. This one is probably the closest vote and was tough to decide between Ennis, Ed Delahanty, and Sherry Magee.

-Jay Floyd: Ed Delahanty is easily your top left fielder in team history. This Hall of Famer is the all-time Phillies leader in doubles as well as triples and is among the team leaders in hits, RBI, stolen bases, runs and batting average.

-Corey Seidman: It is literally a tossup between Greg Luzinski and Pat Burrell, who had an identical .852 OPS as the Phillies’ leftfielder. They both played on teams that won the World Series. I vote Luzinski because he makes better pulled pork sandwiches.

-Pat Gallen: The Bull and Pat the Bat are in a tight race here. Both won a World Series, both hit many home runs. Luzinski was a four-time All-Star and did so in an era when offense was not quite as prominent, especially in terms of runs scored by the Phillies. I’ll give the nod to The Bull, but it’s very close.

OK… South Jersey boy relocated in Indiana several yrs ago after 29 years in the Army…. Question: What is “Lindy’s Phillies Preview”; where do I find it on Line.
You can take this Bubba out of the Del Val – but you can’t take “America’s Team” (PHILLIES!!) away from him. GO FIGHTIN’s…… this is our Year! Again!

Just a word or two about Luzinski, with no inclination to offer an opinion since Ed Delahanty is a major force in the vote, and I didn’t see him play.

But on Bull. It’s perhaps more widespread than the one opinion I recall reading some time ago from a fan who postdated Luzinsji’s career amd was left with the opinion that Burrell and Luzinski were a lot alike. Not even remotely close.

Greg Luzinski was a textbook hitter who could hit for average and power. In fact, considering his dexterity as a hitter, it was in some ways an upset that Mike Schmidt’s legacy left The Bull in the dust. Greg’s early demise was somewhat predictable based on a weight problem. He had to be about 31 years old, hardly old, when Dallas Green started spotting Lonnie Smith in the lineup, and it wasn’t long after he continued his career with the White Sox.

Let the stats tell you what they want. Believe that because Pat Burrell and Luzinski had equal OPS’s that there’s an equality to them. Not even remoely close. Luzinski had 39 dingers one year, and if you added up the distance of his swings on those connections, it still didn’t pass the long swing on a single stroke that Dom Brown was showing during some of his struggling times. Perfectly short and sweet.

And by the way, there was always talk back then about breaking up the righties, 20 and 19, just like there is now with 26 and 6. Ozark, Corales, Pope, Dallas never made the move, and the Phils kept rolling.

Ken, your preference for Luzinski over Burrell is borne out by a somewhat deeper look at the stats. For example, while their OPS was the same, their OPS+, which adjusts for the offensive environment at the time that they played, shows Luzinski was better:

Might not have come across this way, but I was addressing a comparison on styles between the two based on that youngblood comment that he’d been led to believe they were the same type players, then I moved on to just talking about Greg’s positives. I really wasn’t commenting on Bull V Pat.

Ken. You are right on. The Bull was considered an elite power bat & slugger during his time with the Phillies. One of the best in the National league. I appreciate Pat’s career but he was never close to elite. if you saw both players live for any period of time and aren’t blinded by just the stats. The Bull was clearly a more dominant player. Sometimes the stats just dont pass the eyeball test.

We have a strong post-1920 rule for our all-time teams with exceptions given to deserving nominees (think Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson)… we did not grant an exception to Ed Delahanty but you could make an argument that he deserves one. It’s so hard to evaluate players of that era… Big Ed’s story is pretty crazy, though. Died being thrown off a train and over Niagara Falls at age 36.

That being said, this depends upon your criteria. Numbers alone and not discounting dead ball era stats, it’s probably Big Ed. My criteria centers upon the question, “Who is the best player among these players to represent this franchise at this position?” In that light, you start thinking about big moments and beyond the numbers stuff. In that light, Del Ennis is a worthy nominee and would get my vote. The Pride of Olney, a War hero… his name showed up on MVP ballots seven times with the Phillies. He averaged 109 RBI per 162… that’s four more than Stan Musial averaged during his playing career (playing in roughly the same era).

Delahanty didn’t lead in home runs, but it would have been nearly impossible to match the more recent left fielders trying to knock that dead ball anywhere. He did lead the later players in doubles and triples, which means he was still knocking that lump-of-mush baseball pretty darned hard and pretty darned frequently. Then you can add in the stolen bases and the batting average.

The only other player listed who even comes remotely close is Ennis, and the emphasis has to be put on that “remotely.” Maybe the ball was garbage in Delahanty’s day, but I can only note that his career outshines those of many, many of the guys who were his contemporaries.

I have to admit though I know of Ennis and Delahanty from books and reading of Phillies history I did not see either play or know elite they may have been. Having lived through the entire careers in Philly. I would have to go with the Bull but neither were defensive stand outs And from what little info on the other two the were a lot better in the field. I know power hitters were look at differently Bull’s ability to hit for average and power puts him ahead of Pat. But I will never foget Pats double in game 5 2008 that will hold a spot in my mind forever.

This is clearly a licquor induced post. Maybe even without the Kool Aid mixed in.

Case in point.

AFW’s insightful scouting report alludes to Burrell and Luzinski with this reference…

“Even though neither could field a bit.”

To which Baseball comma Ken E. wonders how in tarnation anyone could be so disrespectful of the effort Bullzinski put in to the defensive portion of his game.

One spring, down Clearwater way, the Genius of his time, Danny Ozark pulled number 19 onto
a side field and said, “Bull, here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna put this Gold Glove on the field and have it chase after you. It’s like tag. The object is not to let it tag you. Capiche?”

Luzinski, though Polish by descent, showed his appreciation for the Italian vocabulary by saying, “Sure, skip.”

The exercise commenced, and you never saw a player run so fast to avoid the speedy gold glove. Luzinski worked so hard at avoiding the gold rush that he lost 8 pounds in the 45 minute exercise. It’s irrelavant that after dinner that night, his net weight for the day was positive 4 pounds.

To say that Luzinski couldn’t field a bit is pure arcwash, ooops, I mean hogwash. Typos fault. But clearly Luzinski could defend. Observors to this day haven’t seen a ballplayer defend themselves agauinst a chasing gold glove on any form of land where WBC baseball is represented.

There is no place for fiction on message boards. Always tell the truth.

That 9th inning was the worst Philadelphia sports moment that I have ever experienced. In looking back on it 35+ years later, the odds of such a sequence of events actually happening had to be infinitesimally small.

1. Davallio (sp?) bunted on an 0-2 pitch with 2 outs and reached on a single.
2. Mota hit a liner to left that Martin most likely would have caught had he been in for the Bull.
3. Luzinski compounded Ozark’s error by making a bad throw.
4. Lopes hit the smash off Schmidt to Bowa, who threw Lopes out, but Froemming missed the call.
5. Garber made an error trying to pick Lopes off 1B, allowing him to get to second and score on Russell’s single.

I’m too young to have experienced the ’64 collapse. I imagine that any fan who lived through ’64 probably saw that 9th inning vs. the Dodgers as a 20 minute microcosm of the last few weeks of the ’64 season.

The real problem losing that series and the year before to the Big Red machine was that those were truly great Phillies teams in 76-77, maybe -top to bottom- the two best in the history of the franchise.

I’m still voting for Danny Ozark for the wall of fame this year. Lack of other great candidates aside, no other manager put together consecutive 101 win seasons.

My three votes this year-
Ozark
Schilling
Rick Wise- for no other reason than without him, there never would have been a Lefty Carlton.

Lots of great memories from that season Andrew. That team was easy to love.
I don’t know if I’d blame it all on Mitchy poo – I mean, none of the pitchers had anything left, zilch. I thought game 4 was going to do them in. What more could the offense do? Milty with 5 rbi, Nails with 2 hrs and 4 rbi – it was amazing yet Greene, West, LA and Mitch all blew it. Game 4 was theirs. What a heart breaker.

Grew up watching my “1st” favorite player as a kid..#14 “ding dong” Del Ennis. A son of the Philly area so of course, he was booed as bad as Dick Allen in later years. Never saw Ed D. but watched the Bull and the Bat. Ennis was better all around than both.

Got to put in a word or two for my man Del Ennis. As a longtime member of SABR, I’m well aware of the significance of statistics, power ranking, etc, in gauging player performance.
There also exist however intangibles that stats can’t reflect. Del’s intangibles were as good as his stats.

Del’s career stats are even more imposing when factored against a lineup in which he was the only legitimate, true power hitter. A lineup that never had a decent lefthanded hitter after Sisler to hit behind or ahead of him. Ennis was often pitched around. This is why Hamner and Jones were considered pretty good clutch hitters since pitchers chose to face them rather than Ennis.

Another myth that has grown up about Del is that he wasn’t a very good fielder. This is totally untrue. Until later in his career after gained weight, Ennis had above average speed and always maintained a gun for a throwing arm. Until Ashburn came along the Phillies were planning on making him their center fielder.

Can’t speak to Delahanty, but Burrell and Luzinski, though fine players, are not in Del’s class.

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